The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

March 22, 2026 – Fifth Sunday of Lent - John 11:1-45

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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Nothing is more fascinating, more something to wonder about and more mysterious than the fact of our being alive. We may not think about this often because daily life can be so distracting as we think about what’s for dinner or what causes that nagging pain in our lower back or the state of the world or how are we going to pay all our bills.

Speaking just for myself, while these distractions come and go all through the day, I try to occasionally take note that I am alive and that I have experienced countless highs and lows through the years. But, of course, eventually I will die. We all will. That thought leaves me with somewhat fearful, but also with hope for more.

Today’s gospel is about one of the most dramatic of the miracles of Jesus, the raising back to life of his friend Lazarus a few days after he had died. Not only is this event presented in John’s Gospel in rather dramatic fashion, but the news of this happening appears to have spread to nearby Jerusalem.

Some biblical scholars suggest that as Jesus became much more known Jerusalem, he was thought to be a possible threat to the ruling elite there. And we know what that led to!But here I want to reflect on what happened to Lazarus through the power of God as manifest in the work of Jesus. Again, following the thought of various biblical experts, this particular act of Jesus raising Lazarus back to life is presented with unusually specific details, like even the smell of his partial decomposed body. In many ways, bringing Lazarus back to life  was the most dramatic of all the wonders attributed to Jesus.

And one of the most important for us. As I write this and you read it, we are both alive.  But we also know that our lives on Earth will end. Then what? Well, that is a rather challenging question. At the end of the Apostles’ Creed, we find the words, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting.” Put simply, this states that death is not a final moment, but a step along our life journey.

There are a variety of ways of describing what happens next, but what’s constant is that our existence, originally created by God, is also sustained by God into the future. We are now approaching the celebration of Christ’s resurrection at Easter. A day to celebrate. It’s also a time for us to imagine the wonders of our own future. Our own resurrection.

David M. Thomas, PhD